{"id":654880,"date":"2026-05-20T18:17:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T18:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/654880\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T18:17:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T18:17:09","slug":"live-updates-former-cuban-president-raul-castro-indicted-in-us-over-1996-fatal-downing-of-two-planes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/654880\/","title":{"rendered":"Live updates: Former Cuban president Ra\u00fal Castro indicted in US over 1996 fatal downing of two planes"},"content":{"rendered":"

What’s in this for Donald Trump?published at 17:50 BST<\/p>\n

17:50 BST<\/p>\n

\"\"Bernd Debusmann Jr
White House reporter<\/p>\n

Donald Trump will not be at today’s announcement in Miami, but his presence will very much be felt. <\/p>\n

Ultimately, today’s indictment – and his administration’s wider Cuba policies – is one that could benefit him politically. <\/p>\n

Trump has long enjoyed significant support among Cuban-Americans in Florida, nearly 70% of whom voted in his favour during the 2024 presidential election. <\/p>\n

Since returning to office, however, that support appeared to have soured. Partly, that is a result of the administration’s immigration policies, which have not spared more recently arrived Cubans from deportations, immigration detention centres and the denial of political asylum. <\/p>\n

Many Cuban-Americans, however, feel extremely strongly about the Cuban government that many of their families fled after Fidel and Raul Castro toppled the government of Fulgencio Batista in 1959. <\/p>\n

It was this exile community that spawned the Brothers to the Rescue organisation involved in the 1996 shoot-down incident at the heart of the indictment. <\/p>\n

Any policy that is seen as damaging towards the Communist government, or a step towards eventually removing them from power, will be immensely popular. <\/p>\n

Notably, there are currently several powerful Cuban-American figures in US politics, including Miami-born Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Florida representatives Mar\u00eda Elvira Salazar and Carlos Gim\u00e9nez, the latter of whom was born in Havana and is the only Cuban-born lawmaker serving on Capitol Hill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What’s in this for Donald Trump?published at 17:50 BST 17:50 BST Bernd Debusmann JrWhite House reporter Donald Trump…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":654881,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-654880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/654881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}